Please check my AAdvantage math for Japan

According to my math, if you use AAdvantage points to fly to Japan 3 times, you get enough points to fly back once more.

But it's even less if you have a Citi card. Apparently just once. Please help check my math?

* Get Citi AAdvantage, get 30,000 bonus points
* Ask for a secret "platinum challenge" for $250 (google: "AAdvantage challenge")
* Fly to Japan once, for $1400
**** You have to find the right flight code, this part is the hardest, but I figured it out online
**** Get 12,500 miles
**** Get platinum status after you return
**** Get 2800 miles because 2x miles per dollar if you use your Citi card
**** Spend $5000 on your citi card, get last 5000 miles (you have to spend $1000 already to get the 30k)
=== Fly to Japan again for free using 25K + 25K points.

* Fly to Japan again, for $1100, get 25,000 miles (platinum bonus is 100%)
* Fly to Japan again, for $1100, get 25,000 miles (platinum bonus is 100%)
=== You have the 50,000 points to fly to Japan a 3rd time!

Very helpful, and getting the Platinum bonus on the first fly would be awesome - meaning it's even easier.

I might still fly directly ORD->NRT because the extra miles, 1206 miles * 2 round trip * 2 platinum = 4824 miles, worth 2.2c/ea ($106), might not be worth the extra air time even if I were to pay myself just $10/hour.... though if I wanted to try to get to a million faster, then maybe, so thank you for the suggestion.

Thanks for the link! I just googled "ORD to NRT distance" for my first estimate, which was really close to AA's exact numbers.

For the platinum challenge, I may have to keep it simple. It looked like every Discount, but not Deep Discount, class added $200 to the ticket per segment, so non-stop may be the better option.... actually, writing this out, I suppose I could do ORD to LAX on regular deep discount, and LAX to NRT on... no, that wouldn't work, because LAX is closer than ORD to NRT, and I want my discount but not deep segments to be as long as possible.

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